German Footage of a Homicidal Gassing with Engine Exhaust. Part 6: Forgery Allegation

The Mogilev homicidal gassing footage discussed in the previous parts has been
subjected to doubts about its authenticity. Interestingly, these were not limited to the usual suspects, but included a German public prosecutor investigating Nazi atrocities and Holocaust Museum staff. In any case, the suspicion that the footage was faked by the Allies is unsubstantiated in the light of the available evidence.

A German Public Prosecutor

The West-German investigators obtained image stills of the gassing scene in Mogilev and
used them in their investigations and interrogations in the 1960s. Concerns about the authenticity of the gassing footage were expressed by the
Stuttgart public prosecutor Rolf Sichting, who tried to track
down the perpetrators of the scene. Seemingly tired by the fruitless search for
owner of the vehicles shown in the photographs, Sichting noted on 27 December 1961:

In the meantime, doubts came to my mind if the images are real or
possibly staged or the result of a photo montage. The tactical signs are not
known to any of the relevant inquiry offices. Also, the numbers appear
hand-drawn. It would have made more sense to lead the the gas hoses on the
shortest way into the room in question by placing the vehicle with its rear to
the wall.

(BArch B162/4340, p. 11)

In retrospect, Sichting’s reasons were not particular thrilling. The
investigators had already learned that the tactical signs were simply chosen by
the local unit leader. The vehicles were placed perpendicular to the building according to eyewitnesses, but they may have been moved in parallel to the wall
in order to have a good shot for the footage. This kind of staging by the
Germans themselves is irrelevant for the wider context.

If West-German investigators were still concerned about the authenticity
of the images - there is no indication for such in the files - , this should have been vanished at latest in December 1962 when the license plate of the truck showed up on
a list of vehicles of the police battalion company assigned to
Einsatzkommando 8 in 1942 (see Part 3: Responsibility (I)).

United States Holocaust Memorial Museum

According to the on/off Holocaust denier or semi-denier David Cole, the US Nuremberg trial
movie Nuremberg: Lessons for Today, which disappeared from the scene after its
release in Germany in 1948, was rediscovered by him in 1994 in the US National
Archives and called to the attention of U.S.
Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM):

I became convinced that the footage was genuine, and I wrote to the U.S.
Holocaust Memorial Museum. I exchanged a series of faxes with their film
archives director, Raye Farr. I wouldn’t speak with her over the phone, for fear
that my incredibly unique voice might tip her off that I was Cole (Cole’s
“death” was still fairly recent at that point). In several faxes, Farr told me
that the experts she spoke with believed the “gassing” footage was a Soviet
fake, staged to use against the Germans at the Nuremberg Trial.

We do not have to take Cole’s word for it, since his story that
the USHMM staff used to have doubts on
the footage’s authenticity is confirmed by the following two articles of 2005 (as pointed out by someone in our comment section here):

Raye Farr, director of the Holocaust Museum's Steven Spielberg Film and
Video Archive, says that the Schulberg films have provided the basic material
for generations of documentaries about the war. Scholars, she says, still pore
over the films, still question what they find in them. Using documents in the
possession of Sandra Schulberg, they now know that a scene showing a gassing in
Belarus is one of the few authentic depictions of the Nazis' first experiments
with this new form of murder.
"It's been in there all along but we didn't know what it was and we didn't
know if it is authentic," she says. Now they do.

Another rarely seen piece of film - distressing in the extreme - was shown
to us during a research trip to the USHMM. The film purported to show an early gas van in operation. There was a
certain amount of debate over this, and the questions were raised: 'was this a
post-war reconstruction?'; 'what exactly was its provenance?'1 Our caption made
it clear that its provenance was uncertain, but it provided a unique visual
record of the steps taken towards industrial killing.

1. The film is purported to have been shot in Mogilev, Belarus. One historian
at the IWM [Imperial War Museum] who is suspicious as to the authenticity of the
film suggests it may have been 'mocked up' or assembled after the war by the
East German state-sponsored film company DEFA (Deutsche Film
Aktiengesellschaft).

(Haggith et al., Holocaust and the Moving Image: Representations in Film an
Television in 1933, p.
25)

The doubts expressed by the staff of the United States Holocaust Memorial
Museum and the British Imperial War Museum until 2005/2006 could be understood to some extent if they knew next to nothing about the
footage and its historical context.
The issue was certainly poorly researched by the Museum’s staff. As a matter of
fact, some essential information was already available at the time, if one just
looked for it.

The provenance of the footage was mentioned in 1953 by the Historian Gerald
Reitlinger in his standard work on the Holocaust:

Wirth may, however, have played a lesser part in the evolution of
engine-gassing. As a Kriminalkommissar he was a subordinate of Arthur Nebe, who
was commissioned by Himmler during his visit to Minsk in July or August 1941, to
find a humane way of dealing with mass executions...This story of von dem
Bach-Zelewski's finds some confirmation in the discovery in 1949 in Nebe's
former Berlin apartment of an amateur film, showing a gas chamber operated by
the exhausts of a car and a lorry.[20]
...
[20] Letter to the author and photographs from Mr. Joseph Zigman, Information
Services Division, Office of the US High Commissioner, Germany.

(Reitlinger, The Final Solution, p. 130 & 603)

The positive identification of the truck as vehicle used by the police battalion assigned to Einsatzkommando 8 in Mogilev in discussed in Mathias Beer's article on German gas vans from 1987 (Beer, Die Entwicklung
der Gaswagen beim Mord an den Juden, Vierteljahreshefte für Zeitgeschichte,
1987, 3, p. 408; English translation here).

The provenance revealed by Reitlinger is confirmed by the letter of Stuart Schulberg to Rudolph Goldschmidt of 18 June 1947 (summarized as "footage found in your house depicts gas chamber, vital evidence", partly quoted in Sandra Schulberg, Filmmakers for the Prosecution: The Making of Nuremberg: Its Lesson for Today, p. 21). According to the Washington Post article above, it must have been the find of this document in 2005 or earlier, which made Raye Farr dismissing her suspicion and accept the footage "as one of the few authentic depictions of the Nazis' first experiments with this new form of murder".

Holocaust Denial

In 2013, Klaus Schwensen published an article in the Holocaust denial journal "Inconvenient History" dealing with the gassing footage in some detail. He is not a full blown denier, but more like a semi-denier. He does accept the German Euthanasia with carbon monoxide gas as well as the experimental gassing carried out by Albert Widmann in Mogilev, subjects that will be fought tooth and nail by most Revisionists. They will, however, be likely eager to accept his claim that the Mogilev gassing footage is a Soviet forgery.

Legality

Since the pictures were taken at close range, the photographer must have
been authorized to document the scene. On the other hand, there can be no doubt
that taking pictures of a secret operation was strictly forbidden.

Even if it were true - for the sake of argument - that it was forbidden to take pictures of secret operations, this would only mean that somebody did not care too much about such regulation. It is far-fetched to suppose that German paramilitary and military personnel would have never or barely done so in the East. Numerous private, compromising photographs found among German soldiers attest the opposite, e.g. shown here German soldiers posing next to corpses (from Reifarth & Schmidt-Linsenhoff, Die Kamera der Henker):

It is further absurd to presume that taking official pictures of secret operations was always strictly forbidden. To the contrary, it is obvious that there had to be one leader, who could authorize taking pictures of any operation. The only question is how far this had to go up in a specific case, to a commando leader, group leader, Heydrich or Himmler.

For example, the SS and police were given permission to take pictures of executions for official reasons. In Himmler's order to the Higher SS and Police Leaders of 12 November 1941 (Národní archiv sg.109-8/6, p.42, online at badatelna.eu), he approved taking pictures in the case this is "officially ordered" and that film and copies are stored in the archive of the corresponding office. The details on how to proceed in such case are written down in a follow up regulation of Heydrich to the SS and police offices of 16 April 1942 (Národní archiv sg.109-8/6, p.36, online at badatelna.eu). According to this, "pictures of executions for official reasons have normally to be ordered by the leaders of the Einsatz- and Sonderkommandos". Hence, an authorization on the level of the commando leaders was sufficient to take photographs of executions.

The Mogilev test gassing was not only attended by the commando leader Otto Bradfisch but also by his superior, the group leader Arthur Nebe. It is entirely possible that the documentation of the gassing Nebe had to report to Himmler/Heydrich was considered sufficiently approved according to the practice at the time.

So while shooting the film could have been easily legal, this was hardly the case anymore when Nebe stored it at his home. Here we go: Nebe did something illegal. So what? He was executed in March 1945 for his involvement in the 20 July 1944 plot against Hitler. Keeping footage of gassing at home was chicken feed compared to treason.

Professionalism

According to Schwensen, the stills are the "work of professionals" and were taken in the evening or at night with "professional lighting". Schwensen does not explain why the lighting cannot be the result of a low standing sun, though. Anyway, even if there was artificial lighting involved here, nothing speaks against the assumption that Einsatzkommando 8 employed floodlight at the site if the sun was already down. In this context, it is interesting to note that Nebe had experience with filming according to his staff member Andreas von Amburger:

Nebe was not a clear suspect for some time after the 20 July 1944 plot. According to the account of Bernhard Wehner, head of the RSHA office V B 1 and initially in charge of the search for Nebe after he disappeared, Himmler still expressed the possibility that Nebe may have been just insane (Wehner, "Das Spiel ist aus - Arthur Nebe", Der Spiegel, 30 March 1950). The first team that looked for Nebe consisted exclusively of men of his own Criminal Police. The Gestapo men took the lead as the involvement of Nebe and the Criminal Police became more likely. The latter had little interest in finding Nebe and many Gestapo men were likewise old colleagues of him. Wehner recollects that the Gestapo man leading the manhunt "did nothing" himself to find Nebe and that none of the officials of the Criminal Police "showed any desire to seriously find their boss" (Wehner, "Das Spiel ist aus - Arthur Nebe", Der Spiegel, 13 April 1950). Wehner suggests that the police would have "forgotten" about Nebe if he did not ask for attention with another fake suicide attempt (Wehner, "Das Spiel ist aus - Arthur Nebe", Der Spiegel, 30 March 1950).

According to Wehner, the housing of Nebe's wife in Joachimsthal was "mildly" searched by the Criminal Police and later "harsher" by the Gestapo (Wehner, "Das Spiel ist aus - Arthur Nebe", Der Spiegel, 6 April 1950). Based on eyewitness accounts obtained after the war, Wehner reconstructs that how in November 1944 the Gestapo searched Nebe's actual whereabouts in Motzen (after the Criminal Police had no success earlier). The house search was done "superficially" and "listlessly" within 15 minutes and the garden with Nebe's hide-out was not even looked at (Wehner, "Das Spiel ist aus - Arthur Nebe", Der Spiegel, 13 April 1950). So much on the Gestapo's "thorough search" in the case.

Given these circumstances, it seems possible that Nebe's own house was not thoroughly searched. There is no indication that the police or the Gestapo confiscated anything from Nebe's house or waded through his private stuff. Or that they were bothered about Nebe's film archive. Or were interested in some shots from his time in the East unrelated to the 20 July 1944 plot. Furthermore, it is not clear if the film roll with the Mogilev scenes was placed on a shelve or had been hidden - in the latter case it seems not unlikely that the rather superficial and listless Gestapo would not found it, whereas Goldschmidt could have stumbled across the hideout, for example, during renovation work of his new house.

Testimony

As pointed out in the previous part, the KTI/RKPA members Albert Widmann, Hans Schmidt and Alfred Bauer, who carried out the experimental gassing in Mogilev together with Nebe's staff and Einsatzkommando 8, did not recognize the stills of the footage as "their" test run. Schwensen checked out Widmann's and Schmidt's interrogations of 18 April 1962 (cited from Staatsarchiv Ludwigsburg) and 4 May 1962 (cited from BArch B162/1604) respectively. He missed that Bauer had initiated the chorus on 9 December 1961 (in BArch B162/4340). Schwensen argues that Widmann and Schmidt's testimonies give the "final blow to this photograph". While the testimonies raise doubts that the test gassing is shown in the footage, they are far from enough for proving this.

The KTI/RKPA witnesses did provide contradictory and uncertain descriptions themselves, which should be taken into account when judging their observational accuracy and ability to match the footage with memory.

For example, on the very same page cited by Schwensen, Schmidt also stated that he does not know anymore if the building was made of wood or stone nor did he remember the second introduction port and hose described by Widmann (interrogation of Schmidt of 4 May 1962, B162/1604, p. 496). Evidently, Schmidt did not have a photographic memory of the scene more than 20 years after the event.

Widmann was arguably more confident in his testimony, which does not rule out that he might have had a slip of memory on more than one occasion. For instance, he may have confused the inside view through the glass window into the gas chamber with the outside view when he recalled that the "bricked window looked terrible...next to the white plastered building wall" (interrogation of Widmann 8 April 1962, BArch, B162/1604, p. 493).

Alternatives

And then there is yet another explanation for the dissonance between the testimonies and the footage. There had been way more than just one homicidal gassing in the Mogilev area. In fact, the majority of inmates in the central Mogilev asylum, where the footage was taken, was killed with engine exhaust in September/October 1941 (see Part 5: Responsibility (III), something Schwensen obviously did not know, although he could have read about it in Winkler et al., Krieg und Psychiatrie 1914-1950, 2010, p. 93, cf. Gerlach, Kalkulierte Morde, p. 648. So even if Widmann’s experimental gassing is not identical to the footage, the next nearest explanation would be that it shows the main gassing in the Mogilev asylum (with Widmann's test gassing then being a separate action). There is no need to resort to a forgery claim, which comes along with a weird conspiracy theory.

Conspiracy Theory I

Instead of snapshots of a German atrocity, Schwensen’s considers the footage as a Soviet "fake" by the Extraordinary State Commission "to fabricate propaganda material against the ‘fascists’". There is no evidence whatsoever to support this hypothesis nor does it make any sense.

The Soviets learned about the gassings in the Mogilev asylum from its Russian doctors and through them, Schwensen writes, "must have known some details, but overlooked others". However, the footage includes details of the experimental gassing according to Widmann et al., which were lacking in the testimony of the former asylum staff: the use of a cabriolet Adler car and a truck for the gassing and the transport of the mentally ill with a horse-drawn cart. The Russian doctor Aleksandr Stepanov did not identify the kind of vehicles employed (interrogation of A. Stepanov of 20 July 1944, in Istoriya mogilyovskogo evrejstva. Dokumenty i lyudi, book 2, part 2 (2nd. edn.), 2010, p. 194). So by chance the Soviet film crew is supposed to have picked exactly the right vehicles (the Adler, a police truck and horse-drawn cart) for the scene. Lucky guys!

The next problem, why? "To fabricate propaganda material against the 'fascists'", says Schwensen. But why a Mogilev asylum gassing? Among all German atrocities the Soviets came across upon their advance into German occupied territories and during their investigations, the Euthanasia killing of mentally ill people by setting them to "sleep" with engine exhaust in an Belorussian town was one of the least suitable to exploit for propagandistic purposes. The Soviets supposedly went all the way to fake German atrocities on film on an original site, but instead of Auschwitz, Majdanek, Treblinka, Maly Trostinez, Babi Jar, Charkov & Krasnodar etc. pp., all they come up is the local gassing of mentally ill people in Mogilev in collaboration with Russian asylum staff!

On top of that, the footage would have been staged in one of the least suitable ways for their propaganda purposes. Instead of Germans, we see Russian asylum staff helping the victims from the horse-drawn cart to the gas chamber. Instead of mistreating and beaten the victims, they are cared for and helped down and wrapped into a blanket. Instead of being threatened to death, we see calm Russian asylum staff. Instead of grim German fascists threatening the asylum staff, a relaxed German soldier stands in the background acting more like a bystander than a perpetrator. Instead of terrified victims, they smile and greet the camera man. All of this makes no sense from a Soviet propagandist point of view and already refutes the notion that the footage has been fabricated by the Soviets. The scenes were shot pretty much how it was done by the Germans - or at least how German propaganda would have liked to display how it was done.

Next problem, after placing so much care in the fabrication of the footage even going back and reconstructing the original gassing site in Mogilev, what do the Soviets do with such trophy and precious propaganda material? It was not submitted as evidence at the Nuremberg trials. In May 1947, the Soviets released their own movie on the Nuremberg trial Sud narodov. But it does not feature the Mogilev gassing scenes. Not that it makes any more sense that the Soviets would have "faked" the footage as late as mid 1947 instead of during or right after the war, but even if - for the sake of argument - they were suddenly hit by the idea to fake an Euthanasia gassing after their release of Sud narodov, there was nothing that prevented them from using this propaganda film by themselves instead of donating it to some Rudolf Goldschmidt.

Conspiracy Theory II

A variant of the forgery allegation has been proposed by a Holocaust denier in the comments of this blog (see here). According to him, Rudolf Goldschmidt, who acquired Nebe’s former house, got the idea to fake some atrocity footage he would "find" there and paid some Soviet movie-makers to do so. Just as with the Schwensen story above, this one is not supported by any evidence and is made up from scratch. Moreover, the theory does not make much sense. It is implausible that Goldschmidt would have spent a small fortune on the research, the travel, the actors (including emaciated people as mentally ill), the props (like the Adler cabriolet with license plate registered to the Security Police - see Andreas Herzfeld, Handbuch Deutsche Kfz-Kennzeichen, Band 1, p. 252, cf. online here - and the truck with proper license plate assigned to Einsatzkommando 8), the permissions - for none of which there is any evidence that they were launched, done, acquired, obtained - just because the new owner of Nebe house "came up with the idea" to fabricate some footage, which did not even contain any exaggerated, propagandistic element. Or that they had to shoot the footage at the original historical site in Mogilev instead of simply using more readily available options, including shooting on set. Or that some Western guy, even with some ties to the Soviets, could just pay for a film to be made at a Nazi atrocity site in the Soviet Union in Stalin's time and would even be allowed to tamper with it.

This variant of the theory that the footage was faked by Westerners avoids the issue as to why it had not been used by the Soviets. However, if the Soviet authorities were not even involved in the forgery, it just raises the next unresolved issue, how Goldschmidt was even aware of the Mogilev gassing and how it was conducted according to the Soviet investigations. But he even had to go beyond what the Soviets learnt from the asylum staff in 1944. Where from did he know about the Adler? About the truck? About the license plate of a truck employed for Einsatzkommando 8 in 1941/42? Von Amburger only mentioned "Nebe's eight cylinder car", his hearsay account does not mention that a second vehicle was employed. So if Goldschmidt scripted the scene based on von Amburger's testimony (which Goldschmidt obtained how again?), there would be no truck connected to a second gas port in the wall.

Howsoever we put it, there are no sources known to be available at the time that allowed to reconstruct the scene as it was later pictured by Widmann et al.

Conclusion

Not knowing the provenance and full range of evidence, some public prosecutor in West-Germany and staff of the USHMM and the IWM used to have concerns about the authenticity of the footage. With all the facts laid down, they are as unsubstantiated these days. Except to Holocaust deniers and their affiliates of course, who continue to advance an implausible allegation with unfounded arguments not backed up by any evidence.

There are good reasons to regard the Mogilev gassing footage as authentic German material. The footage was reportedly found in the former house of Arthur Nebe. Nebe was the head of Einsatzgruppe B with its headquarter in Smolensk and Einsatzkommando 8 stationed in Mogilev. The footage was shot at the central Mogilev asylum, which was indeed cleared in 1941 according to contemporary documents. The scenes and setup are very similar to what is known from testimonial evidence how the gassing of mentally ill people with engine exhaust were carried out in general and specifically at this place. The truck with its license plate POL 51628 shown on the gassing scene belonged to the police battalion assigned to Einsatzkommando 8 in Mogilev. The Adler cabriolet with the license plate POL 28545 was registered to the Security Police. Nebe is known to have "liked to film" (interrogation of von Amburger cited above) and was present for the first gassing. The action is displayed how it was likely carried out by the Germans or at least how they preferred it to look like.

The only issue here is that Widmann, Bauer and Schmidt did not recognize the stills as the first test gassing. The contradiction can be resolved either by considering them to have been wrong or by supposing that the test gassing and the large scale gassing of the central asylum in Mogilev were separate in time and place and that the footage captured the latter one.

41 comments:

Yet again you've failed to mention that the film has disappeared and all we have is the 30 seconds of it used in N:ILfT. Nor did you inform your readers that it was never submitted to the Nuremberg Einsatzgruppen trial [which started just a few months after its discovery] despite the fact the prosecutor wanted to submit film evidence—the film depicts a crime mentioned in a German document used by the prosecution! Nor that this film was in the hands of a senior OMGUS employee who had previously worked collecting film evidence for the big Nuremberg trial; so his failure to pass it on is inexplicable.

If you refresh your memory about the NMT Einsatzgruppen Trial defendants you'd see why the film *couldn't* be submitted to that case.

Not one of the defendants had any potential criminal responsibility for the Mogilev gassing.

Nebe's successor as commander of Einsatzgruppe B, Erich Naumann, was on trial, but since the film was found in Nebe's flat then it would have been quite a stretch to pin the crime on Naumann, this would have required ignoring Amburger's testimony from 1945. The other Einsatzgruppe B defendants all served with Sonderkommandos with armies at the front, none of the men had served with Einsatzkommandos 8 or 9.

But as usual, you skip merrily over a crucial evidentiary step: finding evidence that Ferencz, the NMT authorities or indeed anyone in the US Army JAG branch involved in war crimes even knew about the film.

If as is quite probable, your research fails to turn up such evidence, then the non-alert from the OMGUS Documentary Film Unit won't be "inexplicable" or even "suspicious", it can easily be just another case of 'mine, all mine' hoarding and possessiveness coupled with a not untypical obliviousness of one department (located in West Berlin) to what another (located in Nuremberg) is doing. All of which would be made much easier by the lower profile in the press given to NMT cases compared to the 'trial of the century', IMT. One final reason it might not have occurred to them to pass on the film for war crimes investigation purposes is because the apparent main perpetrator was quite obviously dead.

If you *do* find evidence that the war crimes investigators and prosecutors were told of the film, then Nebe's deadness might well have derailed any further investigation, especially in mid-1947 when the wider US Army war crimes program was winding down.

None of this makes the slightest difference to your forgery scenario, since it fails utterly to account for the film's use of a known Einsatzgruppe B vehicle license plate. Rather than follow you down your rabbit holes as we did last time around, I suspect you'll find you're asked repeatedly about this, should Hans, Sergey and others bother to respond to your conspiratard drivel.

You link Andreas Herzfeld's pdf of police reg nos. as proof the Adler's reg [28545] was a Security Police vehicle. But the same document also lists the van's reg [51628] as belonging to "PP Berlin".

Is that consistent with the van being allocated to 1st Company, Police Battalion 3? And were they really in Mogilev as early as Sept 1941?

__________________

NT >>> If you refresh your memory about the NMT Einsatzgruppen Trial defendants you'd see why the film *couldn't* be submitted to that case.

You're making a sizeable assumption insisting Musmanno [renown commie hater] would have refused the film. Which, evidently, Schulberg hadn't passed on by 30.09.47, the day USSR 81 was submitted and viewed; it was rejected on 06.10.47.

I don't believe Ferencz, Telford Taylor, or Walter H. Rapp—the Director of the Evidence Division of the Office of Chief of Counsel for War Crimes [OMGUS]—knew anything about the film, because Schulberg never informed his colleagues of it because he knew it was a fake.

As for your bluster re. *Berlin's along way from Nuremberg* and *the EG trial wasn't highly publicised*:

Each week the OMGUS's in-house publication 'Information Bulletin' featured a staff list. Here's the one from the 13.01.48 edition on which you can find Schulberg next to Zigman [under 'Information Control Division'], the staff of the 'Office of Chief Counsel for War Crimes' [inc W. Rapp, head of evidence], and the judges of the EG trial under the heading 'Military Tribunals'.http://images.library.wisc.edu/History/EFacs/GerRecon/omg1948n126/reference/history.omg1948n126.i0007.pdf

Former Nuremberg film-evidence collector and compiler Schulberg and Zigman would have known perfectly well that the Nuremberg EG trial was happening, and that the film would be vital evidence [if it was genuine, which they knew it wasn't].

________________

SR >>> "...despite the fact of the obvious stupidity of Schwensen's article, I'm sure some chimp somewhere found it excellent."

Whoever could you mean. KS might not have the super googling powers that enabled you to prove the discovery story wasn't impossible. Although you did fail to find that the significance of the SS to RG letter had been known for over a decade before you noticed it. KS performed some great archival research for his article. Thanks to him we have the very interesting quotes from Widmann and Schmidt—the ones causing Hans so much trouble. KS already accepted the film was shot at the asylum, so you proved him right on that.

Schwensen's so-called archival research was woefully incomplete, as Hans has so amply shown by citing the files in the series that Schwensen did not examine.

---

BTW, convergence of evidence strikes again: the film found in Nebe's flat + it being shot at the exact site in Mogilev = the film is authentic.

The conclusive arguments about the absurdity of the Soviet involvement in this article are just the background knowledge that is simply the default assumption, hence not an explicit part of my argument above, *because they are so freaking obvious* and are already "baked in" the argument. I mean, really, that we had to explain something that obvious is a sign of how poor the "Revisionist" argumentation really is.

Hence my earlier assertion that already the first postings in this series demonstrate the film's authenticity.

Pol.Res.Bat 3 started to replace Pol.Res.Bat 9 in December 1941. Since the Mogilev footage was most likely shot in September/October 1941, the truck was hence brought to Einsatzkommando 8 by Pol.Res.Bat 9 and later taken over by Pol.Res.Bat 3.

BRoI:"You're making a sizeable assumption insisting Musmanno [renown commie hater] would have refused the film. Which, evidently, Schulberg hadn't passed on by 30.09.47, the day USSR 81 was submitted and viewed; it was rejected on 06.10.47."

The assumption isn't very sizeable when you cite a rejected exhibit in the next sentence ffs.

You're evidently unable to refute the basic point of the irrelevance of the Mogilev film to establishing the criminal responsibility of any of the Einsatzgruppen trial defendants.

"I don't believe Ferencz, Telford Taylor, or Walter H. Rapp—the Director of the Evidence Division of the Office of Chief of Counsel for War Crimes [OMGUS]—knew anything about the film, because Schulberg never informed his colleagues of it because he knew it was a fake."

You've no evidence that Schulberg thought the film was fake. Please provide some textual evidence of this, such as a letter or diary. Otherwise you're just making shit up.

Now you need to show that this source actually mentioned the Ohlendorf/Einsatzgruppen trial. Scanning through the tables of contents for the relevant time frame - the last one for September 1947 is herehttp://digicoll.library.wisc.edu/cgi-bin/History/History-idx?type=header&id=History.omg1947n112&isize=textI don't see anything that would have served as an extra reminder to the film unit in Berlin. You could try Stars and Stripes as well, or whatever other news sheets existed for the US occupation forces. US press coverage of the trials fell off considerably after IMT; this doesn't mean to literally zero, it means there was simply less attention paid to the NMT trials. If you can establish that Schulberg subscribed to the NYT and was an attentive reader of every last story, then that might help; it *still* doesn't mean that someone is automatically going to make a connection and pick up the phone/write a letter. Project-focused tunnel vision is *extremely* common.

Also: not the only point that was made. There are many possible explanations for why the film might not have been passed on to war crimes authorities, which we don't know at this stage. To turn your retarded conspiracy theory into fact, you need evidence, which you don't have.

What will never be evidence for your CT of fakery is an absence of evidence from the relevant OMGUS, OCCWC, US Army etc files, because there are numerous reasons why the film might not have been passed on, starting as mentioned with the deadness of Nebe, but also including the professional focus of Schulberg on IMT rather than on the ongoing but underpublicised NMT trials.

This would not be the first time in history that someone failed to pass on a piece of evidence without anything nefarious being intended, even when the evidence *was* of burning immediate relevance, which was clearly not the case here, since Nebe was, um, dead.

"Former Nuremberg film-evidence collector and compiler Schulberg and Zigman would have known perfectly well that the Nuremberg EG trial was happening, and that the film would be vital evidence [if it was genuine, which they knew it wasn't]."

Prove that they thought the film wasn't genuine. Your claim, your burden of proof. Find a textual source or go take a hike.

OMGUS became very anti-Communist in 1947 and its program was aimed at re-educating Germans with a view to combating Soviet influence. This conflicted with the ongoing punitive aim of trials so I would infer that there was an emerging conflict of interest between OMGUS and NMT by this point. The idea that non-collaboration between OMGUS and NMT should be a mystery just does not gel with the change that took place in that year. It is also belied by the well-documented failure of bureaucracies to co-operate in many types of system.

One afterthought. The whole "Soviets faked it" conspiracy theory is also significantly weakened by the fact that the Soviets were not exactly known for forging material (incl. documentary) evidence without rhyme and reason. Sure, they would do it in when they were on the defense (Katyn). But otherwise they would rather go with exaggerated interpretations (Danzig soap) or use some witness testimonies (even the infamous Moscow show trials relied on testimonies rather than material evidence - and NKVD obviously had had every chance to forge some documents proving the Trotskyite conspiracy).

In this sense the DEFA hypothesis was much more reasonable, if one doubted the authenticity. DEFA was at least caught faking things needlessly (the Buchenwald photo). Of course the confluence of the footage being found in Nebe's flat and showing an authentic Mogilev hospital site blew this hypothesis out of water.

Goldschmidt's background was distributing escapist US movies in Europe, as this article makes clear:

http://www.spiegel.de/spiegel/print/d-41121052.html

There's nothing that connects this background to an interest in documentaries, war crimes and the like, which is presumably why he passed the film to Schulberg. Equally he appears to be too small-fry to be able to set up a film project.

In parts 4 and 6, you've quoted or referred to several statements by Nebe's translator Andreas von Amburger. Although you've not always made it clear whether the information is derived from his 1945 American interrogation in Moosburg Internment Camp or statements he gave in 1959 and 1962, you were clear that in December 1945 he told his American interrogators how he'd heard Nebe had carried out gassings at Mogilev using an Adler, and that Nebe "liked to film".

Could you please post the full text of von Amburger's statements in which he's discussing the gassings at Mogilev and Nebe's penchant for filming?

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JH>>>>"There's nothing that connects this background to an interest in documentaries, war crimes and the like, which is presumably why he passed the film to Schulberg. Equally he appears to be too small-fry to be able to set up a film project."

I refer you to Chamberlin's book for a more detailed view of Dr. R. Goldschimdt. On page 43 he quotes an OMGUS document which mentions "he is a distant relative of the Goldschmidt-Rothschild family". His relation, Gilbert de Goldschimdt [this 1927 JTA article mentions his grandfather's financial clout] was in the US Army making films for the Marshall Plan's Motion Picture Section at this time, and went on to make several films with Stuart Schulberg between 1949-1956.

A former MGM colleague and compatriot of Rudolf Goldschimidt was also Stuart Schulberg's producer on N:ILfT from mid-1947 on: Erich Pommer.

"In parts 4 and 6, you've quoted or referred to several statements by Nebe's translator Andreas von Amburger. Although you've not always made it clear whether the information is derived from his 1945 American interrogation in Moosburg Internment Camp or statements he gave in 1959 and 1962, you were clear that in December 1945 he told his American interrogators how he'd heard Nebe had carried out gassings at Mogilev using an Adler, and that Nebe "liked to film".

Could you please post the full text of von Amburger's statements in which he's discussing the gassings at Mogilev and Nebe's penchant for filming?"

Okay, von Amburger merely mentioned "Nebe's eight cylinder car", don't know how I read here about the Adler. Must have been too late. That's even worse for you (not that it matters much at this point), so there was no testimony available on the Adler used in the Mogilev gasssing.

It seems to me that all this hoo-haa about whether or not the film footage is genuine is essentially irrelevant, given that there can be no doubt that an experimental gassing of inmates of the Mogilev Psychiatric Hospital was carried out, and that it was followed by the further use of the gassing technology to kill Soviet mental patients on a relatively large scale.

What I found missing from this analysis was a discussion of the reasons why this experimental gassing at Mogilev was carried out. Was it just to find a quick and easy means of clearing out Soviet hospitals to make them available for use by the Wehrmacht? Or was there a planned connection with the later use of the technology of gassing with vehicle exhaust in the mass killing of Jews at the well-known extermination centres?

With regard to the question of why the Gestapo did not find the footage in Nebe's residence in 1944 during their search for him following his involvement in the Bomb Plot against Hitler, perhaps it should be looked at in the context of the theory that Himmler had prior knowledge of the plot but allowed it to proceed since the death of Hitler would remove the main obstacle to his ongoing attempts to negotiate a separate cessation of hostilities with the Western Allies. That theory rests on the surprising passivity of the SS in the immediate aftermath of the failed attempt on Hitler's life, leaving the coup in Berlin to be thwarted by the Wehrmacht itself under the leadership of Goebbels.

According to that theory, one of the main concerns of Kaltenbrunner in managing the Gestapo investigation of the plot was to conceal any evidence of SS complicity, even if only passive. If the theory corresponds with historical reality, then it might explain any seeming reluctance of the Gestapo to conduct a proper search for Nebe, or to search his house thoroughly.

"planned connection" is hard to prove for September 1941. Ian Kershaw's essay on Chelmno, "Improvised Genocide?", might be a good pointer to this phase. I think the answer to your question is "somewhere inbetween the two"; the experiment was aimed at wider use than mental patients but not yet clearly aimed at the numbers that were killed in Poland by gas.

Michael Mills: "What I found missing from this analysis was a discussion of the reasons why this experimental gassing at Mogilev was carried out. Was it just to find a quick and easy means of clearing out Soviet hospitals to make them available for use by the Wehrmacht? Or was there a planned connection with the later use of the technology of gassing with vehicle exhaust in the mass killing of Jews at the well-known extermination centres?"

The context would emerge more clearly from examining the Minsk experiment in tandem with Mogilev; this series is focused primarily on Mogilev so won't have the full context.

Nebe summoned chemists from the KTI after Himmler's visit to Minsk in mid-August 1941; this is documented. The context also suggests that there was already strain on firing squad executioners, who were overwhelmingly engaged in murdering Jews in ever larger numbers. The experiments in Belarus, however, seem more focused on the murder of the mentally ill, and obviously using gas was already a method that had been applied in Poland (Sonderkommando Lange) as well as Germany/Austria (T4). Within weeks of the Mogilev experiment, the KTI was testing out gas vans at Sachsenhausen; the first vans were sent east by the end of the year.

It would be surprising if Nebe wasn't thinking ahead, bearing in mind his unit had a bigger task (the escalating mass extermination of Jews), but witnesses involved in these actions seem rather tunnel-visioned, focusing on the action, and ignoring the bigger picture, with the exception of Bach-Zelewski's well known testimony.

The judgment of Widmann's trial states that Hans Schmidt's car was used in the gassing; it says that his driver Alfred Bauer manoeuvred it into place and Schmidt connected its exhaust to the room. When the patients were inside the gas chamber, Bauer turned on the car's engine and then left the vehicle [JuNSV 26:562-3]. Schmidt denied that he recognised the registration of the car during his 18 December 1959 interrogation. You didn't tell us what Bauer said about the car in the stills, but then you didn't tell us anything he said about the Mogilev gassing aside from he thought it happened on a Monday; although you did let on that his testimony is also problematic to your interpretations A & B.

It's possible Nebe used a different car in a subsequent gassing immediately following the KTI/RKPA team's departure, but it would be a little strange if he opted again for the van-car combo on a later date, because on Thursday 18 September 1941 he is supposed to have perfected the two truck method that was used to gas the insane at the Novinki asylum near Minsk. [See: Gerlach, Failure of Plans [...] pp.64-5; ESC Report 38: Minsk; Dr. Akimova's testimony in Aussonderung und Tod, p.88-91].

The Widmann trial judgment says the KTI/RKPA test gassing took place on a Tuesday, but it also says it was a Tuesday two days earlier, so C.F. Rüter et al. noted "Richtig wohl: Donnerstag" [p.562]. If it was a Thursday, it must have been the 4th or 11th of September if Dr. Akimova's dating of the Minsk gassings is correct; Gerlach believes it is because she must of had notes.

Another argument against your interpretations A & B is that fact that there's no known footage of the attempt to gas the patients with the car alone. The judgment states that although the van was already in position prior to the first attempt its exhaust wasn't connected to the building until after that failed. Nebe's wouldn't have known the first attempt was going to fail, so he would have filmed it.

As Hans said, Nebe wasn't initially suspected of being involved in the plot. After Graf von Helldorf was arrested on 24 July, Nebe faked his suicide by leaving his clothes and wallet on the beach at Wannsee.

The Manchester Guardian reported on 04.08.44 that the previous night German radio had offered a 50,000RM reward for news of his whereabouts, advising that he may have been attacked, or, due to gland trouble, might be wandering around aimlessly using the name Freidrich Schwarz. Even the Guardian—who'd never previously heard of him—figured he was probably connected with the bomb plot because 3 days earlier German radio announced a £50,000 reward for Karl Goerdeler "for conspiring against the life of the Fuhrer".

SR tells us von Aumburger informed his American interrogators that Nebe liked to film things on when he was chief of EG B. As he wasn't present for the Belorussian lunatic asylum gassings, von Aumburger must have witnessed his boss filming other actions. Only the Mogilev footage was reportedly found by Goldschimdt. Maybe the Kripo or the Gestapo found all his other movies, or maybe Schulberg lost them as well.

Hans mocks the Gestapo's alleged "thorough search" of Nebe's house by citing a series of magazine articles that don't mention any searches of Nebe's house, but only the two searches of his wife's house in Joachimsthal and one of Frick's home in Motzen.

Hans: "Wehner recollects that the Gestapo man leading the manhunt "did nothing" himself to find Nebe [...]"

Nebe's wife was held in custody for 8 months, including at Dachau, and repeatedly interrogated. Adelheid Gobbin's gave up Nebe's hiding place after the Gestapo's Willy Litzenberg threatened her with prosecution for involvement in the bomb plot. So it actually appears that "the Gestapo man leading the manhunt" made considerable efforts to locate Nebe.

Hans: "There is no indication that the police or the Gestapo confiscated anything from Nebe's house or waded through his private stuff."

This extremely peripheral matter doesn't appear to be covered in the published literature; however, the Gestapo case file should be checked by anyone wanting to draw conclusions on the searches conducted at Nebe's home. The Kripo may have just been searching for a missing man, but the Gestapo were also after any information about the plot and further conspirators. Documents and such in Nebe's house would have been of interest to them.

But I see how you failed. You relied on Beer's article in which he claims "The incident just described [Widmann on the Mogilev test gassing] is also reported in the deposition by the Russian doctor N.N. Akimova of 18th November 1946, who gives as date of the experiment the 18th September [footnote 37]."

Beer's wrong; Dr. Akimova was head of the Novinki asylum near Minsk and was describing a different set of gassings in a different location.

BRoI: you're well over a week behind Hans pointing out my mistake privately, before the latest post went up.

I'm curious as to how I "relied" on Beer when I referenced Gerlach - the muddling-up of Novinki and Mogilev stems from reading his footnotes on the Kindle edition far too quickly, rather than walking to the bookshelf to look up my print copy.

Winkler and Hohendorf in Beitraege 26 cite Soviet sources sent to the DDR for the Georg Frentzel trial that date from 1944 (the original ChGK investigation) and... 1948.

> Another argument against your interpretations A & B is that fact that there's no known footage of the attempt to gas the patients with the car alone. The judgment states that although the van was already in position prior to the first attempt its exhaust wasn't connected to the building until after that failed. Nebe's wouldn't have known the first attempt was going to fail, so he would have filmed it.

You wouldn't have a first idea what Nebe would or would not have filmed.

> SR tells us von Aumburger informed his American interrogators that Nebe liked to film things on when he was chief of EG B. As he wasn't present for the Belorussian lunatic asylum gassings, von Aumburger must have witnessed his boss filming other actions. Only the Mogilev footage was reportedly found by Goldschimdt. Maybe the Kripo or the Gestapo found all his other movies, or maybe Schulberg lost them as well.

Amburger never said that Nebe liked to film *actions*. And films of generic Russian peasants not only wouldn't have been of much interest, they wouldn't have likely been hidden along the "criminal" footage in the first place. Try to use some common sense next time.

BR >>> Nebe's wouldn't have known the first attempt was going to fail, so he would have filmed it.SR >>> You wouldn't have a first idea what Nebe would or would not have filmed.

But I do. Let me remind you of what your colleague proposed:

Hans >>> Nebe also seems to have had some affinity to such kind of footage, as he supposedly showed the Euthanasia film Dasein ohne Leben to hundreds of SS officers.

Hans >>> the rather "friendly" atmosphere on the footage, which makes sense for a German Euthanasia propaganda clip

Hans >>> It is entirely possible that the documentation of the gassing Nebe had to report to Himmler/Heydrich was considered sufficiently approved according to the practice at the time.

The point stands: If Nebe was filming the gassing he would have filmed the first attempt as he could not have known that it would fail.

SR >>> Amburger never said that Nebe liked to film *actions*. And films of generic Russian peasants not only wouldn't have been of much interest, they wouldn't have likely been hidden along the "criminal" footage in the first place. Try to use some common sense next time.

I did request that Hans quote what von Amburger said to his American interrogators about Nebe's penchant for filming. Hans implied he didn't transcribe the context of von Amburger's second comment: "...wie schon erwähnt filmte er gern..." ["didn't note the ellepsis, so don't ask"]. After a subsequent comment from yourself I asked politely that you quote the context of his original remark "Nebe filmte gerne"; you refused to do so.

You two aren't singing from the same hymn sheet on whether you possess a copy or just notes of von Aumburger's 1945 statement, nor about what von Amburger said Nebe liked to film.

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NT - I'm curious as to how I "relied" on Beer when I referenced Gerlach - the muddling-up of Novinki and Mogilev stems from reading his footnotes on the Kindle edition far too quickly, rather than walking to the bookshelf to look up my print copy.

Excellent. You are promoted to Kommandant of KL Verschiedene with immediate effect.

Whatever, Dr. Nick; I've learnt not to waste time with you or Hannover whilst you defend—in a remarkably similar fashion—dodgy claims about some text saying or indicating something that it patently doesn't.

> The point stands: If Nebe was filming the gassing he would have filmed the first attempt as he could not have known that it would fail.

Um, no. To repeat: you have no idea of what Nebe would or would not have filmed for certain. Not only you're trying to play mind-reading, you're trying to practice it on dead people too.

The above statement is nothing but your speculation, without knowing the specific immediate circumstances that surrounded the creation of this footage or the footage's creator at the time, whether Nebe or anyone else. So you have no idea when the idea to film came to the creator, whether there had been any filming attempts that failed, whether the first test was filmed after all but did not survive even 1941 for whatever reason, technical, authorial (like simply dismissing the film stock) or otherwise, etc. etc. etc.

IOW: pointless speculation in order to muddy the waters but adding no new knowledge.

As for Amburger, I transcribed the gassing description and this particular phrase. You can be sure that if Amburger claimed anything about filming actions, you would have seen it in the article, since this would have been a direct confirmation. As far as I recall, Amburger implied that Nebe filmed mundane things (like peasants). As such, this is relevant to the point about professionalism, as well as Nebe's general familiarity with filming.

Hey Holocaust deniers, you're looking stupid now. Kurt Franz who was one of the top the Nazi SS guards in charge of Treblinka admits to the gassing and mass murder of the Jews at Treblinka. http://www.jta.org/1964/10/23/archive/commandant-of-treblinka-camp-admits-giving-orders-to-gas-jewsCommandant of Treblinka Camp Admits Giving Orders to Gas JewsOctober 23, 1964

``> The point stands: If Nebe was filming the gassing he would have filmed the first attempt as he could not have known that it would fail.``

Have you a crystal ball? One thing about you charlatans that I have never got my head around is how you assume that a certain historical individual would have done it `this way`or `that way`. It is a shocking display of arrogance and hollow idiocy.

SR >>>> In this sense the DEFA hypothesis was much more reasonable, if one doubted the authenticity. DEFA was at least caught faking things needlessly (the Buchenwald photo).

Wrong, again.

Those photos were taken by Willem Hoogwerf in April 1945 using an American camera. A captured SS-man was forced by US troops to pose in the scene and was later shot. One of the photos was published in Belgian newspaper Volksgazet in October 1950, and in the mid-1950s a copy was sent to FDR prosecutors preparing to try Martin Sommer by a former prisoner group who claimed it was taken secretly during the war and depicted Sommer torturing prisoners.

See the article on the Buchenwald photo archives in the proceedings of the June 2010 Conference of Thuringian Archivists:http://www.homepage-nico-thom.de/Archive_in_Thueringen.pdf